ZIK GBEMRE SPEAKS ON BAN ON STATE GOVERNMENTS REPAIRS OF FEDERAL ROADS: ANOTHER BUHARI’S SELF INDICTMENT

So, rather than address the Federal Government’s failure to leave up to its responsibility of constructing and maintaining federal roads across the country, President Mohammadu Buhari’s best solution to the deplorable federal roads is to ban state governments from doing the needful so that the federal government can pay belatedly at her convenience.

The President has forgotten how the oddity of state intervention on federal roads came about. It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to construct, repair and maintain federal roads across the length and breadth of the country.

Due to the federal government’s deliberate failure to meet up its responsibility on these roads, many began to fail and before long the enormity of reviving them became overwhelming for successive federal administrations.

While the collapse of the federal roads lingered, it was residents in the state, even the affected state government that mostly ply those roads and consequently bear the brunt. This was the pain that compelled state governments to those sinking huge funds from their treasury to assist the federal government and relevant agencies to fix the road, to be refunded by the federal government later.

The Federal government set-up a Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to maintain all its roads but the reality has been that FERMA is overwhelmed and incapable of satisfactorily meeting up its mandate. This was the point the state came in with interventions and the results have helped to ease the situation even to the detriment of the state.

Monies that could have been committed to providing basic amenities to the populace were then tied to reviving federal roads, limiting the state’s capacity to focus on state roads and other critical service delivery.

Weeks ago residents trooped out in protest over the deplorable state of the Warri-Effurun-Sapele-Benin highway. That was followed by angrier protesters in neighbouring Edo who actually closed the bypass flyover section of Sapele-Benin Road to traffic as it gave motorists and travellers hard time to pass through.

The Benin protesters didn’t vacate the highway till the government came in with palliative to ease traffic on that bad spot. If the Federal Government does the right thing, no state government will go and repair collapsed federal roads in her domain.

The states realise that when federal roads collapse, it is not the President or minister, or NASS members who hardly travel on land that bear the brunt. It is residents in the affected state, and regular travellers coming in and out of the states that suffer.

So the state is only helping to address federal government failure, repairing collapsed federal roads to ease travel within their domains and interstate travels. So whatever expenses the states incur addressing federal failure must be accepted by the Federal Government. It is that simple and justified.

If the federal government doesn’t want the state government to maintain federal roads, it should not exercise it by fiat without purpose. The federal government shouldn’t allow the roads to be non-motorable. But let’s face it; is there any sector of the Nigerian government that is functioning under the failed Buhari administration? I don’t think there is.

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